It’s
happening all around you. Listen to the strange and you’re sure to bear witness
to the truth. I have been wrong all along. All along I’ve been wrong. There are
no many truths. The Buddhists are confused. Baba Rum Dum sure does drone out a
nice neat message, packages it beautifully. It goes well with our American
cultured minds, so tired of our parents’ Protestantism. We need something
simple. We need to find some excuse to protect us from the dark. We believe
religion will protect us from the shadows. But our parents are being murdered
in our sleep while Christ laughs and dances a nifty cha-cha with his brother
Satan. And so we turn to the East and bow to the truths of the enlightened
ones. Yet, we still die messy little deaths in the mire of man’s hate and
chanting doesn’t chase away the dark.

What are
we going to do? Can’t you see how much easier it is to accept the dark, to no
longer be afraid? Turn off your mystic night lite and walk boldly into the
shadows. There is more than one world. We are all worlds unto ourselves. I am
the only world I know. There is only one world. There is only one truth I can
accept. There is no truth. There are only extensions of myself. See what I am
getting at? Force yourself to try to understand. Put down that comic book.
There is no law of the universe. We are all reflections of the universe.

The
universe is flawed and the flaw is beautiful. I look into her eyes and chant
hymns to the beauty mark on her thigh. Beauty marks are flaws. Understand? My
god challenges your god to a duel. Loaded theologies at dawn. Their seconds are
shrouded in black cheesecloth. In the cemetery they mark their steps and turn
to fire. The bullets pass right through them, killing a small lamb, scarring a
proud tree. I take her hand in mine, she guides it to her breast. My other hand
stabs deep within the fountain of her life. The knife blade finds no milk. I
stifle her moans with a holy candle and try to crawl into her womb. The earth
opens and in her primeval cave I find solitude at last as the laughing
astrologer falls from his pyramid of air.

All that
matters is that love is the key to understanding. I love you. All of you. But I
have failed. I can’t love those I don’t know. I hate them for their distance. I
see the blood on their hands. I smell the pestilence that feeds on their souls.
I love the boulder in the woods where I go to think. I love the stream that
soothes my mind. They are real, always here for me. I am not confused, you
know. Just worried. There has to be someone who can help me unravel these
thoughts, help me find meaning in this madness. Someone who can ease my mind
and explain this terrible longing. Why do I have to wrestle alone with these
tireless demons?

Ever so
gently I wrapped her body in a long silk sheet, carefully pinning the ends. She
looked so pure until the blood soaked through.

Changes, we all go through them. Right now I
am pissed that my “Pearls Before Swine” album is scratched. It seems to mock my
life. Changes, we are always changing. You think you know something, then find
it’s a lie. She is really not dead. Not that way. My only murder is in my head.
At times I am so pure I am invisible. My only sins are in my mind. Don't
believe me, it’s still true. Ask those who did not see me. I was there. I’ll
point them out to you. “God is seeing.” Kenneth Patchen said that and I believe
it. I can clearly see you. Man, am I glad you are there to listen and know how
to laugh. Too few people really know how to laugh these days.

I lifted
her gently over my shoulder, careful not to let the blood drip to the ground.
She was much heavier than on nights of love. Dead weight. I carried her down to
the cemetery where the gods were feasting on barbecued lamb over a wood fire.
They could not see me. I was invisible. Their seconds plotted murder behind a
rich man’s mausoleum. They wanted to be gods. Her body strained my back and I
stopped to rest beside a shady tree. It was a weeping willow and cried huge
tears.

“Why do
you cry, friend?” I asked

“I always
cry for the dead,” the tree answered.

“But
that’s wrong,” I said. “Your tears should be for the living.”

The tree
did not answer, but allowed the tears to fall unchecked into a little stream.
The water was warm, salty and harbored no life.

“See what
I mean?” I asked. “If you cried for the living, I’d have a cool stream in which
to wash off this blood.”

“But how
can I cry for the living, when the living have not learned how to cry?” the
tree wondered.

“I don’t
have all the answers,” I said, fording the stream and climbing to the top of a
nearby hill.

I dug her
grave. She who refused me life had died by my hand. It was my duty, my penance.
She who had been my mother, sister, lover, friend, enemy and just another face
in the crowd. The grave was as shallow as her life. She never did understand
her murder, or why I am so influenced by authors and poets of questionable
literary talents.

Before I
lowered her into the grave, I unwrapped her head and held her shattered face in
my hands.

I wiped
the blood from her lips and chin with the torn tail of my shirt. I undid her
bun and allowed her hair to fall straight down her back and over her pale
shoulders and breasts. I kissed her and felt my tongue bitten by the broken
remains of expensive teeth. Blood trickled from my mouth as she sucked the life
from me. There was no struggle as I undressed us both and joined our bodies. As
one we were always strong. As the air was sucked from my lungs, she possessed
enough life to talk.

“Why did
you kill me?” she rasped.

“Don’t
you like being dead?” I asked.

“It’s not
fair to answer a question with a question,” she said.

“It’s not
fair to question my motives. Besides, I gave you no answer.”

“But, I
loved you.”

“I loved
you, too. That’s why you are dead.”

“Why?”

“So you
would learn to enjoy life.”

There was
no more breath to talk. She slept and I, who could not die, wrapped her again
and gently nudged her body into the grave with the toe of my boot. A dog did
the honors of covering her bones.

On my way
back through the cemetery, I noticed that the gods had finished their feast and
had fallen asleep. Their seconds had stolen their clothing, leaving them naked
upon the grass. Not a pretty sight. I guess the seconds preferred freedom to
the enslaving weight of godhood.

I am
secure in the insecurity of my beliefs. Don’t think for a moment I write just
because I like the sound of my words, even though I do like to hear myself
think. I am not trying to be cute.

Don’t
worry, she will not bother you. She is my own ghost. Personal ghosts are
strange people. She never forgave me for not going to her wake. I never forgave
her for going to sleep. She really doesn’t bother me much. The only thing that
annoys me is she takes great delight in making me whimper her name when I hold
some strange woman in my arms.

I walked
back to the top of the hill to dig on a Walt Disney sunset. They drive me to
wilder and wilder thoughts. It’s getting more difficult to haul one down. They
run into each other, bleeding into incoherency. What do they mean. What do we
mean?

This is
long enough for anyone. I mean, there has to be a time when we can embrace
nothingness as our own private truth and admit that mankind was some kind of
fluke. He is the one that doesn’t make any sense.